Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's funeral draws millions across Iran and Iraq, but his successor and son, Mojtaba Khamenei, has not been seen since the attack that killed his father. Khamenei's three other sons — Masoud, Meysam and Mostafa — appeared at the funeral prayers alongside Iran's president and Revolutionary Guard leadership, signaling confidence in their own security. Iran pushes back on US demands in negotiations to end the war, and tensions remain high over the Strait of Hormuz. AP reports the funeral is a multi-day, multi-city affair across five cities and two countries.
Super Typhoon Bavi is barrelling toward Guam with forecast 160mph winds and 11-metre waves, with landfall expected Monday. Mass evacuations are underway on the Pacific island. Scientists say June smashed yet another global temperature record, worsening heat trends globally. The storm follows extreme weather across the US during July 4 celebrations, where heatwaves killed at least 25 people.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has spent much of his tenure trying to keep the US anchored to the alliance. Trump is demanding loyalty from NATO members ahead of this week's summit, testing the alliance's cohesion. AP reports Rutte's diplomatic balancing act comes at a critical moment with the war in Ukraine ongoing and US commitment to European security under question.
America's 250th birthday celebrations were disrupted by extreme weather, with at least 25 heat-related deaths reported. Trump's July 4 speech at the White House was struck by lightning mid-speech — an extraordinary moment that went viral. Meanwhile a fire broke out on the Brooklyn Bridge during New York's fireworks show, and Paul Pelosi (Nancy Pelosi's husband) was involved in a hit-and-run in California. Trump also pardoned 11 people on the eve of the holiday.
France advanced to the quarter-finals with a 1-0 win over Paraguay in Philadelphia, with Mbappé scoring from the penalty spot in a match marred by Paraguay's "disgraceful" aggressive tactics. Today's blockbuster sees England face Mexico at the iconic Azteca Stadium, where Mexico hasn't conceded a goal all tournament. Meanwhile, Morocco beat Canada 2-0 to advance, and the US's Folarin Balogun had his one-game ban suspended by FIFA, making him available to face Belgium.
Paul Pelosi, husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was involved in a hit-and-run car crash in Napa County, California. The vehicle sustained major damage. The incident comes amid the July 4 holiday period and adds to a week of dramatic US news.
PM Anthony Albanese has arrived in Fiji to kick off a three-day Pacific diplomatic blitz. He's expected to sign the Vuvale Union — a major new security treaty with Fiji — and finalise a uranium export deal with India. The visit aims to deepen regional security and economic ties as Australia counters Chinese influence in the Pacific. The tour will also include meetings with other Pacific leaders.
Labor's new "opt-out" model for gambling advertising allows streaming services to show unlimited wagering ads during quarter-time and half-time sports breaks. Critics including Liberal MP Simon Kennedy say the legislation creates a massive streaming loophole, flooding services with gambling ads instead of reducing them. The government defends the rules as protecting minors through registration and opt-out requirements.
Six silver spheres — dubbed "space balls" — have washed up on Forrest Beach in North Queensland. Officials are investigating their origins, with suspicion that they are space debris containing toxic rocket fuel. The BBC reports the mysterious objects have sparked a national conversation and an investigation by Australian authorities. The debris was also trending on Hacker News.
The NSW Labor state conference voted to adopt tougher poker machine reforms following a grassroots revolt from party members. The new stance represents a significant shift in NSW, the state with the highest concentration of poker machines in Australia. The reforms target harm minimisation and could reshape the political landscape ahead of the next state election.
Australia defeated England by 7 wickets in the Women's T20 World Cup final, cementing their dominance in women's cricket. The win comes as the Australian men's team also advanced to the T20 World Cup final after restricting England to 4-150. A clean sweep across both formats of the global game.
Spectacle Island, a heritage-listed property in Sydney Harbour that has been off-limits for more than 100 years, is coming up for sale. It's one of 67 Defence-owned properties being offloaded by the government. The island features heritage-listed buildings in significant disrepair and is expected to attract major interest from developers and ultra-wealthy buyers.
Following the first H5N1 bird flu detection in NSW last week (a giant petrel on the Mid North Coast), another dead bird has been found on a Sydney beach and sent for testing. Public health risk remains low, but authorities are monitoring the situation closely. NSW has trained 500 extra staff in biosecurity response.
Legendary Leichhardt Italian restaurant Grappa has opened a second location after 27 years of operating as a single venue. The expansion is one of the most anticipated openings of winter 2026. Good Food also highlights Lua by Luke Nguyen at Sydney Fish Market, serving the three-time "world's best rice," and the moody Meadow Music Room in Cronulla serving hot choc profiteroles and filthy margaritas.
The NSW Wine Industry Association announced winners at NSW Parliament House for the 2026 Sommelier's Wine List Awards. The awards, held in partnership with Destination NSW, recognise sommeliers, beverage managers and venues offering wine experiences that showcase NSW's wine diversity. This is a key event for the state's wine industry and relevant to RSN's RIEDEL and SPIEGELAU accounts.
Four finalists have been named: Justin Biskup (CARPE VINO, VIC), Clotilde Candusso (Freyja, VIC), Isaac Pockney (Bennelong, NSW) and Paolo Saccone MS (LUCAS Restaurants, NSW). The winner represents Australia at the ASI Best Sommelier of the World competition in Lisbon (11-17 October). This reboot of the national competition is a major development in Australian wine service.
Nominations are now open for the inaugural Top 100 Sommeliers Australia awards, judged by a panel of highly-respected hospitality and wine professionals. The event runs in July 2026 and is another positive signal for the wine service industry in Australia — sommelier-focused events create demand for premium glassware (RIEDEL territory).
Wine Australia and the Australian Wine Research Institute (AWRI) have entered into a new investment agreement effective 1 July 2026 through 31 December 2030. The $multi-million deal funds research, development, extension and industry support services for Australia's grape and wine sector. A significant development for the industry's R&D pipeline.
Arts Minister Tony Burke has announced federal funding for the Australian Youth Orchestra, Back to Back Theatre, and the Australian Ballet. Each organisation is attached to a high-profile international engagement, with the funding targeting projects designed to strengthen Australia's international cultural standing. Back to Back Theatre is one of Australia's most acclaimed disability-led theatre companies, while the AYO and Australian Ballet represent the country's premier classical music and dance institutions. This represents a targeted injection of federal arts funding linked to cultural diplomacy.
The Albanese government's $1.1 billion arts and culture package for 2026-27, first announced in the May Budget, includes $14.7M increase for Creative Australia (to $326.5M), $22.9M in new measures targeting cultural infrastructure, and $4.6B over forward estimates via the Revive National Cultural Policy. The sector response has been cautiously positive, though the Australia Institute continues to argue that real-terms government arts funding remains at its lowest since 2017-18.
ArtsHub has published its comprehensive guide to major arts sector grants and funding opportunities for 2026, covering federal, state and philanthropic programs. The guide includes Creative Australia's Arts Projects for Individuals and Groups ($10K-$50K), the Regional Arts Fund ($6M/yr for 2027 projects), and the Australian Cultural Fund's 2026 Boost cohort ($150K to 32 recipients). Applications for many programs close mid-August.
OpenAI previewed GPT-5.6 on June 26, a frontier multimodal family with stronger autonomous tool use, data analysis, coding, and multi-step workflows. The three variants — Sol, Terra, and Luna — feature 1M+ token context windows. Crucially, access is restricted to just 20 US government-approved organisations, continuing the trend of frontier models being locked down behind governance-aligned previews. No public pricing or API access announced yet.
Claude Sonnet 5, released June 30, is now the default Claude model for all free and Pro users. It brings improved writing style, instruction-following, and narrows the gap to Opus 4.x. Separately, Anthropic launched Claude Science at the June 30 AI for Science event — a multi-agent AI workbench with 60+ preconfigured research tools for genomics, proteomics, and drug discovery, including an internal program targeting neglected diseases.
No major Hermes Agent version update this week. The project continues to build community attention as the only open-source agent with a built-in learning loop — creating skills from experience, improving during use, and building a deepening model of users across sessions. Community GGUF quantizations for Hermes 4.3 continue to grow. The next Nous Research model release is anticipated later in 2026.
Released June 29 under MIT license, LongCat-2.0 is a 1.6-trillion parameter Mixture-of-Experts model from Chinese tech giant Meituan. It scores 59.5% on SWE-Bench Pro, placing it among the strongest coding models available open-source. The fully open-weight release under MIT is a significant move for large-scale MoE availability.
Mistral AI released Leanstral 1.5 under Apache-2.0 license, a coding-focussed model that solves 587 out of 672 Putnam Competition benchmark problems. Separately, xAI has announced plans for monthly foundation model releases for the rest of 2026, and Alibaba has banned employees from using Claude Code, citing data security concerns.